Rennn Posted November 1, 2011 Share Posted November 1, 2011 I've seen two sets of system requirements; one that lists 512MB VRAM recommended, and one that lists 1GB recommended. Which is correct? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghogiel Posted November 1, 2011 Share Posted November 1, 2011 (edited) Dunno which is correct, but if you want to play with textures on high at 1080 then 1GB would be the safe way. Edited November 1, 2011 by Ghogiel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JDFan Posted November 1, 2011 Share Posted November 1, 2011 (edited) The two sets of requirements you mention are probably the two different levels they provide specs for -- "Minimum Specs" and "Recommended Specs" ---- Minimum is just that the minimum amount needed to get the game to run on a system ( it may not be a pleasant experience but it will load and run ) -- where recommended is the base for running the game at sufficient settings as to have an enjoyable gaming experience (normally around High settings instead of Low or Ultra Low). SO the 512MB of VRAM is enough to get the game to load but probably (depending on the GPU and it's throughput) not enough to run at higher level settings. Edited November 1, 2011 by JDFan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VoltDude Posted November 1, 2011 Share Posted November 1, 2011 (edited) What JDfan pretty much summed it up,But some of the 512 VRAM cards wont be able to load high rez textures since they cant process Color likes better models.Kinda out of topic but yes i know some cards that have 512-768 VRAM but they can't multi load 1024X1024 rez textures. Edited November 1, 2011 by VoltDude Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evilllamas Posted November 1, 2011 Share Posted November 1, 2011 Is VRAM really such a big issue?There are 1gb cards that wipe the floor with my 1.8gb GTX 295, I always thought it was the processor in the GPU that made all the differance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elderiii Posted November 1, 2011 Share Posted November 1, 2011 VRAM is an issue, but it's not all about the amount of it, it depends on the speed of it, what kind of bus it has, cache etc... as well as the GPU chipset itself. It is pretty much standard for new "gaming grade" video cards (HD 6700 series and higher & GTS 450 & higher) to come with at least 1GB of VRAM as the standard, and many new games make use of it all, especially at higher resolutions. I would not purchase a new video card if it did not have 1GB or more of VRAM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShadowscaleB1980 Posted November 2, 2011 Share Posted November 2, 2011 (edited) VRAM is an issue, but it's not all about the amount of it, it depends on the speed of it, what kind of bus it has, cache etc... as well as the GPU chipset itself. It is pretty much standard for new "gaming grade" video cards (HD 6700 series and higher & GTS 450 & higher) to come with at least 1GB of VRAM as the standard, and many new games make use of it all, especially at higher resolutions. I would not purchase a new video card if it did not have 1GB or more of VRAM. Also the number of bits the card's memory bus has - the Nvidia GTX260 core 216 arguably one of the more popular chips from nividia has a bus width of 448 bits and the card typically had around 896Mb of DDR3 Vram. The Nvidia 560GTX Ti uses 1024Mb DDR5 and has a bus width of 256 bits but due to the nature of DDR 5 ram you can get away with using a smaller bus because of how DDR5 memory works - A wider memory bus basically means the more room the card has to fling data around - though faster ram is of course going to have greater output with a decent bus size. ahh I remember the days when a Riva TNT2 Ultra with 64Mb of texture memory was considered cutting edge.;D Edited November 2, 2011 by shadow_scale9180 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rennn Posted November 2, 2011 Author Share Posted November 2, 2011 (edited) It wasn't the minimum vs recommended; I've seen two 'official' sets of recommended, one with 512MB and one with 1GB. Obviously one of them is old or incorrect. I have DDR5 though, and I play at 1440X900 because it's my monitor's native. I'm not certain if my 768MB will be able to maz the textures at that resolution, even with DDR5. Hmm.... I suppose antialiasing also uses VRAM? Edited November 2, 2011 by Rennn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nolgroth Posted November 2, 2011 Share Posted November 2, 2011 I suppose antialiasing also uses VRAM? Yes and some of the "horsepower" from the GPU/CPU, though the more powerful the GPU, the less work for the CPU. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blu02 Posted November 2, 2011 Share Posted November 2, 2011 It wasn't the minimum vs recommended; I've seen two 'official' sets of recommended, one with 512MB and one with 1GB. Obviously one of them is old or incorrect. I have DDR5 though, and I play at 1440X900 because it's my monitor's native. I'm not certain if my 768MB will be able to maz the textures at that resolution, even with DDR5. Hmm.... I suppose antialiasing also uses VRAM? Nah, GPU is working the AA. VRAM is mostly for caching local textures, models and other graphic-related information that need fast access. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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